2011 resume formats put major focus on key words, key skills and are Achievement Based?
Your Resume Writer has been booked in to commence work on creating documents that will fast-track you to the job interview you desire. While we are your digesting your details, we will be evaluating what information the hiring manager will be looking for, and preparing a list of questions to gain the pertinent information required.
In the next 48 hours we will want to know more about your Key Accountabilities and Key Achievements. By giving us detailed information about the scope of your accomplishments and responsibilities, we will write highly targeted documents that highlight your most relevant skills and abilities.
To Help us Help You....
Could you now please think about your last 5 - 10 years and write some notes on the following:
The challenges you have faced to meet company goals
The obstacles you helped the company overcome
Difficult situations and clients you have dealt with
Ideas you put forward to increase productivity
Major projects you have worked on that led to a positive outcome
To ensure your documents are filled with relevant facts that prove you have whatever it is they are looking for, we ask that you scan through the rest of this page to bring you up to speed on what hiring managers look for when evaluating whether you are a worthwhile candidate.
Preparing for Success in the Job Interview
This information will also help you in the job interview, as the recruiters will use the examples you provide in your resume as a resource to ask you specific questions.
If you have any queries about any of this information, or the process that recruiters like to use, please feel free to contact us on 1300 979 890.
Kind regards
The Team at Melbourne Resumes
PS Check out this short video that shows that when employers look at hiring you, they sometimes will evaluate your value like any other product or service they are considering tp acquire for their business.
Hiring managers and recruitment consultants are interested in finding the purpose / value / contribution of what you did, not just the tasks you undertook or the duties of your jobs.
Recruitment consultants will have recruited similar positions on numerous occasions and will be familiar with the main duties of the job. Therefore, spelling out your duties can be a waste of space.
The reader is more interested in the level of your accountability and the purpose of what you were or are doing. They want to know what you were or are accountable for ensuring or achieving in undertaking the tasks or duties comprising your job. We will delve into the purpose of the role and ask how you have provided benefit to the organisation.
To get the conversation going, we will probably ask you:
Why does this role exist?
what value is the role supposed to add to the business or the organisation?
This level of information helps prospective organisations understand what you are / were required to achieve in the job. It helps them to understand the level at which you were / are working.
If we provide the reader with information at this level, it will help to differentiate you from other candidates because most people do not go to this depth. It will provide organisations with greater insight about your abilities and the level of responsibility you have had.
It will help convince organisations that you have what it takes to do the job, and have thought through your value to the organisations with which you have worked.
In order for us to create an outstanding resume, we will require at least 2 achievements for each of the roles you have been engaged with over the last 5-10 years. These can be Obstacles you have overcome to meet your key responsibilities or accountabilities or challenges you and your team have faced in order to meet organisational goals.
We will ensure each Achievement explains the three vital elements:
What you did
How you did it
The result / benefit / outcome /impact / value of what you did
Achievements are things you did which added value, made a tangible or noticeable difference and contributed to the business of the organisation.
They are not skills you learned, abilities you developed, knowledge you gained or awards you won.
We will be asking you to outline the Scope / Context regarding each of your Achievements
If your achievements are quantifiable, don't just provide dollars or other ?raw? numerical data because these are not very meaningful until they are put into a context. For example, if you increased sales by $1m from last year, this might be impressive if the company was a $5m a year enterprise. However, if the company was a $1billion a year business, a $1m increase is not nearly as impressive. Therefore, express increases in sales, decreases in costs, increases in market share and other changes to an organisation's key performance indicators as percentages or fractions.
If you improved customer satisfaction to 90%, or if you increased on time in full delivery to 95% or if you reduced machinery downtime to 1%, indicate the previous period's figure. This provides the reader with an understanding of the magnitude or scale of the improvement. (For example: improved customer satisfaction from 75% to 90% within 12 months by ...... ).
If an achievement is not easily quantifiable, you can still provide a meaningful indication of the value of the achievement. For example:
'Reduced duplication and enhanced the re-usability of test suites by improving testing and planning through discussion forums which enabled team members to share knowledge and identify areas for improvement.
If you were not the person wholly or fully accountable for an achievement, indicate your role or contribution to it.
Saying you 'participated in' or were 'involve' in something is not sufficient.
An employer will rightly ask the question: "What was your role? What was your level of participation?"
Avoid weak and vague terms and phrases. Make your achievements as concrete and explicit as possible, while not getting bogged down in excessive detail.
It is not useful to provide information in your resume about awards or rewards received or information about skills you learned and developed in a job, without explaining what you did to achieve it.
They want to know what you did to earn those awards or rewards or what you did with what you learned. That is, if the company rewarded or awarded you, the reader wants to know what you did to earn them. If you have learnt new skills, the reader wants to know how you applied them to the benefit of the organisation.
If you have sales targets, you'll need to clearly articulate how you have achieved targets, be specific about what the budgets were, how they were measured and the time frame it took....
Have you been awarded any commendations relating to your work, IE. Top Sales Consultant for 2010, Employee of the Month etc?
Has there been an idea or suggestion that you have made to a supervisor that has then been taken on and implemented throughout the organisation?
Talk about the implementation of processes and procedures or software programs etc. that have directly improved efficiency in the workplace.
Can you recall a particular time when you were faced with a difficult customer and had to effectively negotiate a mutually beneficial outcome?
Can you think of a time when you were particularly proud of the work that you've done with a client, where you may have gone above and beyond the realms of your job description to ensure that the client was extremely satisfied with your performance and maybe even sent a letter or made a call to your supervisor to ensure that you got credited with representing the company in the best possible light?
Challenges - was there time when you were faced with a crisis in your role (Eg: staff not turning up, presentation equipment not working, unpredicted bad weather for an outdoor event, high staff turnover on critical projects etc) when you had to come up with a solution that allowed the work to be completed or the event to continue?
Did you implement a marketing strategy that improved the profit margin on the organisation by a certain percentage, increase sales or become a leader in that particular field?
Reduced employee turnover by 50% by increasing salary levels and introducing performance based incentives which enabled enable the organisation to compete with other employers in the industry for the first time and increased the organisation's overall capabilities by enabling it to attract higher calibre candidates.
Mapped the systems architecture and developed the plans to integrate fixed and mobile technologies which enabled the company to offer unique bundled services and become the first in the region to offer client billing services and converged fixed-mobile packages.
Grew the company's online business online with a 30% increase in subscriptions and click through rates which enabled it to focus on pushing the creative envelope online and produce several category firsts.
Developed the secondary insurance market which included raising $10m in seed capital to enable the business to move to the next stage and become part of the company's public listing.
Increased profits by 10% in a highly competitive environment by focusing on the less price sensitive customer segments who valued service, eliminating the need to use price to attract new customers.
Reduced employee turnover by 20% and significantly increased productivity by introducing a performance management system that recognised contribution, challenged staff to accept responsibility and empowered them to make decisions.
Reduced employee absenteeism to less than 2% and eliminated non-genuine sick days by designing and implementing a ?no-fault? absenteeism program which rewarded employees with lump sum payouts of unused sick leave for the year.
Virtually eliminated duplication and enhanced the re-usability of test suites by improving testing and planning through the implementation of discussion forums which enabled team members to share knowledge and identify areas for improvement.
Elevated the perception of the company as a contributor to the community by establishing a community fund which has distributed almost $200,000 to local not for profit organisations and has resulted in the publication of an average of 20 articles a year.
Increased production capacity by 15% by redefining and restructuring work flows which enabled the company to consistently meet or exceed promised manufacturing and delivery turnaround times and enabled the company to more accurately forecast and more capable of accommodating demand fluctuations.
Developed and launched the company's performance management system ensuring a direct link with its Core Values, role clarity and goals at the individual, business unit and corporate levels. This has provided staff with clarity, aligned staff with the company's strategic direction and has improved skills and capabilities aligned to business needs and enabled the company to more effectively identify, develop and retain talent.
Achieved national and international recognition for design and marketing excellence by launching and securing market acceptance of new branding for the business and a range of new products.
How to Leverage C-A-R for Executive Branding and Job Search
Doesn?t everyone love a well-told story with a happy ending?
That includes recruiters and hiring decision makers. Compelling career success stories with the WOW! results you brought to companies generate chemistry and help them picture you at work, driving the same kinds of advances for their organization.
Concise stories elevate your career marketing documents (executive resume, career biography, etc.) and online social networking profiles with evidence to support your promise of value to your future employer.
To build career stories with my c-level and senior-level executive clients, I have them follow either of these frameworks:
Challenge ? Action ? Results (C ? A ? R) OR Situation ? Task ? Action ? Results (S ? T ? A ? R)
Here?s how it works:
Describe a few of your most important contributions to companies within the past 10 years or so. Think in terms of business value that had significant impact on the company. Think about the strengths you tapped into to make those things happen.
Answer these questions for each of the situations you chose:
1. What was the specific CHALLENGE (or Situation) facing the company and/or your team? Were you/the company facing particularly difficult odds with this situation? What were the stakes?
2. What ACTION(s) did you take to meet the challenge and improve things (whatever the goal was or whatever needed turning around)?
3. What were the long and short term RESULT(s) that positively impacted the company? Did you meet the goal and/or turn around the situation? How long did it take to see the results? Monetize the results and/or use hard facts whenever possible ? NUMBERS TALK!.
When I?m working with my clients on this exercise, I ask them to tell the story in depth, step-by-step and not to worry that they?re compiling too much information ? their efforts are well spent. After detailing the entire story, we go back, consolidate, and whittle down the information to the essentials.
Benefits of developing C?A?R stories:
♦ Helps you uncover your key personal brand attributes and link them to your value proposition. While developing your stories, you?ll probably notice that certain qualities, strengths, and areas of expertise consistently run through.
♦ Reminds you of key contributions you?ve made and what strengths of yours have benefitted your companies. This can be a terrific confidence-booster!
♦ Helps you become accustomed to articulating your value in interviews and when networking. Have you ever been interviewed by an inept communicator? Someone who either hasn?t prepared, just doesn?t know what questions to ask to get the information that will help them assess you, or is so busy talking she never asks you any questions? Find a way to gently interject a story.
♦ Adds brand reinforcement to your executive resume and career biography. Include a few tightly-written, to the point success stories (2 to 3 lines each) in your resume. With a narrative format, career bios are custom-made for storytelling. Including stories makes for a much more interesting read than a typical dry bio.
♦ Transforms your online social networking profiles (LinkedIn, Google Profiles, etc.). into high-impact, differentiating career marketing communications.
♦ Generates a stand-alone career document showcasing top contributions ? a Critical Leadership Initiatives brief.
While we are your digesting your details, we will be evaluating what information the hiring manager will be looking for, and preparing a list of questions to gain the pertinent information required.
